A friend of mine recently had her second baby while living in America. She sent out a group email to all of us she went to school with to let us know that her gorgeous little boy had arrived safe and sound, and also to tell us of the bizarre experience she had whilst at the hospital. I asked her if she minded me talking about it here and she was fine with it so here we go…
Basically Louise had her first baby here in England 2 years ago, she was lucky enough to get to 8cm at home before arriving at the hospital and having her first little boy just with gas and air. She was congratulated on her pain threshold and all the midwives jokingly ‘thanked’ her for making their job nice and easy!
Not long after to moving to America she got pregnant again and after talking to her doctor over there was persauded away from her original preference of a home birth and into having baby number two at the local birthing unit. When she told us about this I thought she’d probably made the right decision, she’d only been living there for 2 months and wasn’t totally sure on what the general protocol was for home births.
Anyway, fast forward towards the end of her pregnancy and, in a conversation with her doctor, she was asked at how many centimetres she’d like an epidural. Lou replied that she’d managed without during her first labour so was keen to do it again, but she would take it as it came and wouldn’t be scared to ask for one if she really needed it this time.
At exactly 39 weeks Lou went into labour and she felt calm enough to stay at home for quite a while, when she arrived at her birthing centre she was told she was 8cm dialated and that she ‘needed an epidural to push’ – umm? She told them that she’d already done it once without an epidural and that she felt it would do more harm than good at that stage. At this point the consultant got quite frustrated with her and basically told her off, telling her that she was had indangered her and her babies life by staying at home so long and that she’d stopped him being able to do his job properly.
Luckily soon it was time to push and baby Theodore come into the world quite quickly weighing a healthy 7lbs 2oz and pinking up nicely. The most bizarre part of this whole experience is that within an hour of delivering her baby – safely and without drugs or intervention – she was told by a consultant (different from the original one) that she was stubborn for not taking the epidural and it would of made it easier on everyone if she’d just had one!
She quite rightly made the point that she was one of the lucky few who found labour reasonably easy and so an epidural would of just complicated something simple for her. During the next day that she spent at the hospital she was referred to as ‘the woman who just HAD to do it alone’ by a pediatrician.
I guess at this point I should say that I’m not generalizing births in America (or the UK), I know that some people have amazing home birth and others have very supportive medical teams who support them with there choice for as little intervention as possible. Also vice versa, I know that in the UK some people are persistently asked if they want an epidural or are pressured into a c-section.
The point for me is that this happening anywhere is just totally unnessicary, I’m all for babies getting here in the safest way possible – if that means an epidural, c-section or any other type of help then thats totally understandabl. Personally I had prepared myself for an epidural with Francesca but there wasn’t time in the end.
Has anyone else had or heard of a similar experience? I’m still totally baffled by it!
